One of the Fundamental Flaws of Userreview Websites Such as Amazon and Yelp Is
Fake reviews are a growing trouble for consumers and the local and product-search sites they rely on to make buy decisions. We know from multiple studies that roughly 90% of net users consult online reviews earlier buying.
The scale of the simulated reviews problem is not precisely documented, but it's "in the millions" across sites, according to Curtis Boyd, whose company Objection.co helps businesses identify and remove fraudulent online reviews.
Fake Review Types
Co-ordinate to Boyd, there are five primary sources or types of fake reviews that his company sees:
- Vendors that sell both positive and negative online reviews.
- Business owners directly or indirectly generating fake reviews for themselves (through fake profiles or vendors).
- Current employees writing positive reviews on behalf of an employer.
- Ex-employees writing negative reviews in retaliation for being terminated or laid off.
- Customers lying about or exaggerating a negative experience to obtain a refund or some other benefit (e.1000., discount).
- Review clusters (e.one thousand., friends and family) writing positive or negative reviews inside a short period of one another.
Faux Google Local Guide review profile
The nigh common kind of inauthentic review is from a business owner, using a fake contour. After that, co-ordinate to Boyd, it's reviews generated past false review vendors, typically operating offshore in China, India, Bangladesh or the Philippines.
Yelp, TripAdvisor More Constructive at Moderating
Boyd explained that Yelp and TripAdvisor generally are much better at moderating content and minimizing fake reviews, compared to Google or Amazon, but they still make it through. "There'southward no review website that doesn't have fake reviews," Boyd explains. "The problem is everywhere and there are varying levels of composure."
"There are tens of thousands of [Google] Local Guide profiles endemic by review farms; they've done a expert job of bypassing Google'south detection systems." A large percentage of these profiles are not real people and they generate huge volumes of fraudulent reviews. The screenshot to a higher place reflects a fake profile (Local Guide Level 4) which is office of a "review pod," co-ordinate to Boyd.
Sophisticated Cat and Mouse Game
Objection.co uses a range of AI and auto-learning techniques to identify imitation reviews, including looking at the geographic location of reviewers, review patterns and time frames, relationships between review profiles, review syntax, character count and lexical diversity amongst other methods. Boyd also buys fake review content and profiles en masse from vendors — who willingly sell out their content and writers. "These are mostly minor companies in developing countries and they only want the money."
Boyd has thus been able to buy 280,000 fraudulent profiles and millions of fake reviews and compared them with existent profiles and reviews, to train his systems on patterns and data relationships.
Nosotros also discussed the cost of fake reviews and Boyd rapidly ticked off some prices:
- $50 for fake Yelp review "that sticks."
- $five for a fake review on Google.
- $10-xv for TripAdvisor.
Boyd observes that, "When [business owners] start purchasing simulated reviews they can get fond." It'southward often true, in these cases, that "more than l% of their reviews are fake."
Amazon's 'Very Bad' Problem
Boyd says the problem is peculiarly bad on Amazon. "Amazon every bit a whole is suffering from a imitation review profile problem that'southward very bad." He points out, for example, that about 90% of Bluetooth-enabled products in the electronics category on Amazon are fake. "Books is another bad one," with cocky-published authors generating fake reviews for themselves.
A partial list of other Amazon product categories overrun with inauthentic reviews include:
- Weight-loss products.
- Home fitness.
- Kitchen products (for off-brand products).
Other third parties have identified additional Amazon categories replete with false reviews. Boyd further describes a disturbing situation on Amazon where legitimate brands are losing position and marketplace share because of fake reviews. "Some products are losing their bestseller status to simulated-review products."
While Amazon has periodically taken activeness confronting false reviews, Boyd speculates the company is unmotivated to become too aggressive, because reviews (real or fake) sell products and Amazon continues to benefit straight and indirectly from these reviews.
Consumers Just Starting to Wake Upwards
Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the fake reviews problem, though they don't understand its full extent. They're unhappy about potentially existence deceived and are looking to publishers to establish tougher standards and penalties confronting review fraud.
Co-ordinate to Jebbit's Consumer Trust Data Index, out of 100 companies Amazon is the brand most trusted by U.Southward. consumers. If they were fully enlightened of the simulated reviews trouble on the site, Amazon's credibility might suffer accordingly.
It'due south also possible that if Google, Amazon and other sites don't more vigorously scissure down on review fraud consumers may gradually return to more traditional methods of finding business and product recommendations: word of oral cavity and expert reviews.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine State. Staff authors are listed here.
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About The Author
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine State, a fellow member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.
Source: https://searchengineland.com/fake-reviews-problem-is-much-worse-than-people-know-333331
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